The Lord will Give What is Good

Introduction

Do you ever struggle with the idea that God could forgive you? “I’m just too far gone!” you might think. Or, if you’re a believer in Christ, do you wonder whether He could keep forgiving you? I mean, Jesus talks about forgiving someone seventy-seven times! I think my quota was up within weeks of becoming a Christian—if not days! Should we be fearful of judgment from God, unsure about our standing before Him, constantly fretting about whether we are right with Him or not? The New Testament certainly doesn’t talk about the Christian faith that way, but that can often make us feel worse if we’re thinking this way: “I shouldn’t be fretting about this—maybe it’s a sign I’m not right with God.”

Someone who struggled with these kinds of feelings was a man named Martin Luther—the German guy, not the civil rights campaigner. He wrote that this psalm was written to persuade us not to dread God’s anger: “This Psalm is a prayer containing the feelings of a heart that fears God; and it persuades, in the most impressive words, such a one, not to dread God’s anger.” In other words, this Psalm is a psalm of assurance. It’s there to help us when we’re doubting our place with God. The Psalm is a prayer to God, and the Psalmist, a Son of Korah, is pleading to God for mercy. But in doing so, he shows us the sure grounds we have to receive that mercy—to be forgiven. I don’t often make much of the points, but if you’re one who struggles in this area, it might be worth trying to remember them, to preach to yourself next time you’re struggling. You could even personalize it with “me” rather than “us.” Okay, well, let’s dig in.

Point 1:

God Has Been Kind to Us in the Past (Verses 1-3)

The Psalmist begins by looking back. Many Psalms look back on what God has done in the life of an individual, but here, this Psalm looks back on what He has done for His people. Nobody’s quite sure when this Psalm was written, but many think it was written when God’s people returned from their exile in Babylon. God had rescued them, restored them. There are other times in history when God did this in smaller ways, but that context certainly fits. God had shown mercy to His people, and the Psalmist wants to remind us—and God—of that. What he lists off is incredible! It should be in a hymn! I’m sure it is somewhere! He does it in three pairs.

First, God has been favourable to His land and restored the fortunes of Jacob. The word “favourable” has the idea of being pleased with, happy to accept. It’s even translated as “delighted in” in one of the other Psalms. God, in the past, has been pleased with the land. The parallel in the second half of the verse is “Jacob,” referring to the people, but it may equally be the land itself, as the same word is used in verse 12 for the physical soil. God had granted the people steady harvests, an abundance of crops. After all, this was a land flowing with milk and honey. But it wasn’t just that this had always been the case—their fortunes had been restored, literally turned back. God had flipped the fortunes of His people. The blessings of the land had been removed but had then been restored. God had restored the fortunes of His people. Second, God has forgiven the iniquity of His people and covered all their sin. It’s so significant that it has a “selah” after it, probably a pause to ponder the wonder of it!

God should have punished their iniquity, their rule-breaking, to the fullest extent. He could have destroyed them, but He didn’t. He gave them the divine equivalent of a time-out to show them the wrong they had done. And now, God turns to forgive them. He covers their sin—not like a cover-up, but like a flood covers the earth, to cleanse and purify. But there is still the issue of God’s righteous judicial wrath. And so, we’re told thirdly, God has withdrawn His wrath and turned from His anger. His wrath has been propitiated—that’s the Bible word for wrath being turned aside, diverted. God has been angry at the sin of His people, but that anger has been withdrawn, turned aside.

We’re not told here, but we are told in the New Testament: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:23-26, ESV). In other words, He carried over His wrath to be spent on Christ on the cross. He saved it up for then, that Christ might take it all. We’re not told that here, though, but we are told that God is able to do it—in fact, has done it time and again. Think about that for a second. What kind of a God is this? Who restores the broken? Who shows mercy and forgiveness? Who is rightly angry at sin but turns aside His anger that He might show kindness to His people? What kind of a God does this? Our God does! Not just the God of the New Testament—the eternal God, Old and New Testament. And think about it: this is far from a perfect people God is dealing with. A people who it would be easy to show kindness to? Far from it! This is God relating to people who have sinned, who have rebelled, who made themselves His enemies! He restored them because they needed restoring! He forgave them because they needed forgiveness! The Old Testament often reads as a “how not to be God’s people.” They grumble, they complain, they rebel, they go astray. God is well used to dealing with sinful people! And, as we’ll see, the Psalmist is reminding God of that very fact! The Psalmist praises God for His past kindness towards His people. If it stopped here, we would think this was a Psalm of praise, but it’s not—it’s a Psalm of petition, of pleading, of asking God for something. What? We find out in the next section.

Our God Is a God of Steadfast Love (Verses 4-7)

The Psalmist asks God to restore them. Clearly, they are in hot water again! God is angry with them (verse 5). Now, when we read of God’s anger, we must be careful not to think that God has lost His temper with them, as though God has a short fuse and they’ve been winding Him up. God does not have a short fuse—quite the opposite. And God doesn’t lose His temper. He has a settled, righteous indignation against all evil and wrongdoing. He is a righteous judge, not an irritable teenager. If they are in trouble, you can be sure it’s because they deserve it. And the Psalmist acknowledges that. After all, why would he appeal to God’s past forgiveness if he wasn’t asking for that now? In fact, it’s on God’s track record towards guilty sinners that he is asking. That is what that first section was all about: God, You are the one who restores. You are the one who forgives. You are the one who turns aside from anger. And so, he poses God three questions: “Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again?” He’s asking God, in a gracious way, to revive them, to again turn aside His anger and restore them.

We don’t know exactly what mess they’ve gotten themselves into, but if it is the time of Nehemiah, we see they’ve not learned much from their time-out. Nehemiah finds himself beating and pulling the hair off people to try and get them to obey! This is not a biblically condoned pastoral technique! But I can understand Christian leaders pulling out their own hair at the behaviour of their people! They’re almost in just as much of a mess as they were before! Whether this is the case or not, we know God’s people in the Old Testament go round in depressing cycles of sin, judgment, and crying out for mercy. This is the goal here: God’s mercy, avoiding another painful judgment. But it’s not just to avoid God’s judgment, but that God be praised, that His people be in active enjoyment of Him. The goal is that the people rejoice in the Lord! His praise is the purpose! His glory is the goal! And the Psalmist is right to appeal to that, not because God is some insecure deity who requires constant praise and affirmation, but because that is the reason for which we’re saved. That is what the goal of salvation is.

We can make two mistakes as we talk about “being saved,” as they had been. One is that we forget or ignore what we’re saved from: our sin, God’s judgment, God’s wrath, Hell. But we can equally forget what we’re saved for: His glory, His praise. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9, ESV). “So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:12, ESV). That’s why the New Testament finds it so inconceivable that we carry on as we did before we were saved. We were not saved to carry on sinning as we did before, because we were saved to live lives that bring praise to His glorious name! That was the purpose. We were saved to rejoice in Him! And rejoicing in Him is both for His glory and for our good. When we rejoice in the Lord, we are fulfilling the purpose we were made for! And by rejoicing, I don’t mean just singing, but whole lives lived to God’s praise, in joyful gratitude to Him for His rescue. And the Psalmist recognizes this is what the goal is. His goal in God’s saving them is that God be rejoiced in! Here is the God that saves! Here is the great and merciful God! He doesn’t ask God to act contrary to His nature, but in line with it! “Show us your steadfast love” (verse 7). Not “love me” or “act like you love me.” He prays for God to show them what He is already like—the God of steadfast love. That phrase, “steadfast love,” is one word in Hebrew: *Hesed*. It’s notoriously hard to translate, but let me give you how some translators have tried: mercy, lovingkindness, mercy and lovingkindness, faithful love, loyal love, constant love, unfailing love, covenant love. Does that give you some idea? This is love that doesn’t give up easily. This is love that is linked to God’s faithfulness, His reliability, His dependability. You can rely on this love. And that’s what the Psalmist appeals to: show us that love, God. Show us the love that permeates Your very being, love that will not let us go! Turn back to us. Don’t let us go. Because the Psalmist is aware of what he is like, what people are like.

God Comes with His Righteousness (Verses 8-13)

The Psalmist is confident in God’s forgiveness for His people. He will speak peace (verse 8)—peace to His people, peace to His saints. The word there is related to that word *Hesed*. These are people who reflect that aspect of God’s character. What they mustn’t do, though, is turn back to folly. That word there is translated elsewhere in the Psalms as “foolish confidence” (Psalm 49). God’s salvation is not for those who trust in themselves or in some other source of stability. His salvation is for those who fear Him alone. The Psalms themselves say: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Psalm 111:10a). If wisdom is to fear Him, then folly is not to fear Him or to fear something more than Him.

Fear of God in the Bible doesn’t mean to be scared of God, but to be rightly reverent to Him. A child shouldn’t be terrified of their parents, but there should be a sort of reverence/respect for them. There should be a fear of disobedience towards them or deliberately displeasing them. That is what the Israelites kept losing towards God. They didn’t fear Him as they did the nations around them. They were more concerned with what they thought than what God thought. So, when push came to shove, they would disobey God to appease the nations, putting their foolish confidence in Egypt or Assyria or Babylon instead of the living God! When they fear Him, then surely His glory will dwell in the land. If this is set during the time of Nehemiah, when the temple was built, there was no cloud of God’s glory filling the temple when it was complete. That had been the case with Solomon’s Temple and Moses’ tabernacle, but not the temple built after the exile.

The implication here is that God will not let His glory dwell among a people who don’t fear Him. God’s not mocked. Their hands may have put brick on brick, but their hearts are far from Him. He speaks of a time in the future when steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Now, that just might sound like a bunch of churchy words stuck together, but think about what it’s saying. He’s looking forward to a time when he won’t have to call out to God for mercy, to a time when righteousness and peace will be in sync. Normally, justice and righteousness mean just the opposite of peace, certainly when sin is involved. When people demand justice/righteousness, it often leads to more violence and trouble—retribution, an eye for an eye. And yet, the Bible speaks elsewhere of righteousness and peace coming together, when there will be no need for retribution, no need to ask for mercy, when justice has been done. “Of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over His kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness…” (Isaiah 9:7, ESV). “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17, ESV). Isaiah speaks of this as an effect of the pouring out of the Spirit bringing righteousness to His people: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever” (Isaiah 32:17). All this only comes about as Christ reigns as King, sending His Spirit on His people. Righteousness and peace can only kiss in Christ. As the hymn we sang earlier said: “And Heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.” The cross, where righteousness and peace meet, where faithfulness and steadfast love were truly shown.

That is our confidence that what the Psalm says is true for us: Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and the pouring out of the Spirit. That is what brings the fear of the Lord. That is what brings the glory of the Lord. It’s not about the righteousness and faithfulness we produce. This isn’t a call for us to be righteous or faithful. No, this is something external to us. Verse 11 pictures faithfulness springing from the ground and righteousness looking down from the sky. This is God’s faithfulness and righteousness, working for our good, coming from outside of us. This righteousness is pictured as going before Him like a herald in verse 13, as the Lord returns to His people. His righteousness is needed before He arrives, before the good times return. But, as we said, we can’t produce this righteousness, this goodness, this rightness ourselves. Instead, we need to receive it as a gift from the Lord.

This was what struck Martin Luther about righteousness in the Bible. For many years, the term “righteousness of God” filled him with fear: God is righteous, and I am not, therefore judgment is coming. But the righteousness the Bible speaks of is one that is alien to us, outside of us, one that is imputed to us, counted to us, despite our own sin and failings. His righteousness goes before Him, not to condemn, but to enable the people to receive Him when He returns. Martin Luther wrote of his discovery: “And now, in the same degree as I had formerly hated the word ‘righteousness of God,’ even so did I begin to love and extol it as the sweetest word of all.” And this should give confidence to those who struggle with assurance. God has been kind in the past. God is a God of steadfast love. And God comes with His righteousness. He supplies the righteousness we need to stand before Him, a righteousness that we could never produce ourselves. Like those toys that have batteries included, God comes with righteousness included. We don’t need to produce our own. He gives us everything necessary for this to work.

Do you ever struggle with the idea that God could forgive you, that you’ve done too much? Well, it doesn’t depend on what you have done, but on what God has done. He demands righteousness, yes, but He provides it too! It doesn’t depend on you, but on Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross was enough to turn aside wrath and to provide the righteousness we need. It shows that steadfast love we were talking about. We, too, can look at God’s kindness in the past on the cross. Look to Jesus. Look to His sacrifice on the cross. If you’ve never done it before, look to Him for forgiveness. And if you are forgiven, keep looking to the cross! Keep looking to Jesus. Keep remembering His steadfast love and kindness. Let’s pray all of us would do that. Let’s pray.